A. Beliy
“ Finnegans Wake” is a novel by Irish writer James Joyce. It is known for its experimental style and its reputation as one of the most difficult works of fiction in the Western canon. Written over a period of seventeen years and published in 1939, the novel was Joyce's final work. It is written in a largely idiosyncratic language that blends standard English with neologisms, portmanteau words, Irish mannerisms, and puns in multiple languages.
In the novel, J. Joyce used various modes and techniques: Stream of Consciousness: " riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.“ — the opening passage of the book. The stream-of-consciousness technique, flows freely and associatively, mimicking the natural flow of thought.
Cyclic Structure: "A way a lone a last a loved a long the“ — This incomplete last sentence of the novel links directly to the first sentence of the novel, creating a circular structure: " riverrun, past Eve and Adam's...“ This cyclic nature emphasizes the idea of eternal recurrence.
Mythic Framework : The character Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker is often seen as a modern reimagining of the mythic figure Finn MacCool. The story of HCE's rise and fall mirrors the cyclical nature of mythic heroes and their narratives. Non-linear Narrative: The narrative often shifts suddenly, such as in Book III, Chapter 4, where the story transitions from discussing Shem and Shaun to various other topics without clear transitions. This non-linear approach mirrors the fragmented nature of dreams.
Joyce invented a unique polyglot-language or idioglossia solely for the purpose of this work. This language is composed of composite words from some sixty to seventy world languages, combined to form puns, or portmanteau words and phrases intended to convey several layers of meaning at once. Senn has labelled Finnegans Wake's language as " polysemetic ", and Tindall as an "Arabesque“. Norris describes it as a language which "like poetry, uses words and images which can mean several, often contradictory, things at once“ The style has also been compared to rumour and gossip, especially in the way the writing subverts notions of political and scholarly authority.[184] An early review of the book argued that Joyce was attempting "to employ language as a new medium, breaking down all grammatical usages, all time space values, all ordinary conceptions of context [...] the theme is the language and the language the theme, and a language where every association of sound and free association is exploited."
Joyce frees his novel from novelistic conventions of language, spelling, story-telling, structure, and plot not to make a text that is difficult for the reader, but rather to demonstrate that the reading process is a creative endeavor which is not limited to interpretation and understanding. The multi-layered and anti-hierarchical nature of the text asserts that there are a multitude of ways to read and interact with it, and allows the reader to, as Jennie Wang states, “break the text apart and put it together himself/herself”. Reading “ Finnegans Wake” is thus not an act of explication but rather an act of creation; each reader creates the meanings of the text as they interact with it.
